Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662

Biographical note

French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher. He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a
civil servant. Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to
the construction of mechanical calculators, the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by
generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.

Pascal was a mathematician of the first order. He helped create two major new areas of research. He wrote a
significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of sixteen, and later corresponded with Pierre de
Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following
Galileo and Torricelli, in 1646 he refuted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. His results
caused many disputes before being accepted.

In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline converted to Jansenism. His father died in 1651. Following a mystical
experience in late 1654, he had his "second conversion", abandoned his scientific work, and devoted himself to
philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the
former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In this year, he also wrote an important treatise on the
arithmetic of triangles. Between 1658 and 1659 he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of
solids.

Pascal had poor health throughout his life and his death came just two months after his 39th birthday